Welp, it was a good run fellas, but it appears our days are numbered if scientists are now growing penises in laboratories like freaking houseplants.
According to the Guardian, “After more than 20 years of research, a team of scientists are bioengineering penises in the lab which may soon be transplanted safely on to patients.”
The worst part, as far as most of us reading this is concerned, is that it’s taking place right in our back yards at Wake Forest University.
What’s that? This is actually good news? Do tell…
According to the doctors and researchers working on this project it “would fulfil a real need for men who have lost their penis through genital defects, traumatic injury, surgery for aggressive penile cancer, or even jilted lovers exacting revenge.”
Well, that is good news and it turns out that they’ve already tested this on rabbits with great success since 2008.
So why, six years on from successfully engineering a penis for rabbits, have they not yet done the same for humans? [Dr.] Atala explains that, as is often the case with these things, scaling up is proving difficult. “Even though we can make them in a very small mammal, we have to tweak the technology, the processes, the ratio of cells and so on, to get larger and larger structures. That’s pretty much what we’ve been doing since the rabbits.”
They’ve made encouraging progress. Atala has engineered half a dozen human penises. Although they are not yet ready for transplanting, Atala’s team are assessing the structures for safety and effectiveness. One machine squashes, stretches and twists them to make sure they can stand up to the wear of everyday life; another pumps fluid into them to test erections. Sliced segments are tested at the genetic, cellular and physiological level.
Okay, those aren’t even real penises and it sounds like it hurts like hell.
While that all sounds very, very promising, my only concern is that they’re making darn sure that this research doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. (Sorry.)
H/T MTV; Scientist image by Shutterstock